Sex-specific attentional deficits in adult vitamin D deficient BALB/c mice

Epidemiological studies have shown an association between vitamin D deficiency and cognitive impairment. However, there is a paucity of preclinical data showing that vitamin D deficiency is a causal factor for impaired cognitive processing. The aim of this study was to assess two cognitive tasks, the 5 choice-serial reaction task and the 5 choice-continuous performance task in adult vitamin D (AVD) deficient BALB/c mice. Ten-week old male and female BALB/c mice were fed a control or vitamin D deficient diet for 10 weeks prior to, and during behavioural testing. We found sex-dependent impairments in attentional processing and showed that male AVD-deficient mice were less accurate, took longer to respond when making a correct choice and were more likely to make an omission, without a change in the motivation to collect reward. By contrast, female AVD-deficient mice had a reduced latency to collect reward, but no changes on any other measures compared to controls. Therefore, we have shown that in otherwise healthy adult mice, vitamin D deficiency led to mild cognitive impairment in male but not female mice and therefore this model will be useful for future investigations into unravelling the mechanism by which vitamin D affects the adult brain and cognitive function.